Cost control has become a major issue in these departments. Although small city street departments are not usually required to maintain job cost accounting systems, the need... if not the requirement... is there. Cities must get a handle on cost control and only an effective job costing system can provide it. Without detailed job cost controls, the department head can only guess where the real cost centers are.

Less than half of the cities surveyed do job cost accounting and only 20% use a computerized system. That means 80% of the cities either don't do job costing at all or are using manual, paper systems that are little more than recordkeeping. Manual systems inherently lack the ability to provide meaningful management reports. The mass of raw data is too great, the possibility of error exists in transferring and adding columns of numbers from one form to another, and the time required to compile and analyze job cost data from hundreds of projects, equipment fleets and thousands of repair parts is overwhelming.

Cost control systems not only improve the cost-effectiveness of the operation, they also improve productivity and efficiency. For example, employee productivity reporting is a subset of a cost control system. Tracking labor costs on a per-project or per-equipment item gives management the tools to evaluate productivity. Using a model to form a baseline, it becomes possible to manage productivity and efficiency standards. Based on historical data and management estimates, departments can evaluate the effective use of resources.

Cost control systems also identify projects, equipment items or other tracked categories that are not cost-effective. In other words, based on equipment repair records, it may become apparent that an equipment item is too costly to maintain and a new purchase would result in more cost-efficient operations, decreased downtime and lower costs.